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LONDON, England - Revenge may be a dish best served cold but hot 'n spicy was tastier for Ferrari's Formula 1 team principal Maurizio Arrivabene.
Sebastian Vettel's stirring victory at the 2015 Hungarian GP, the land of paprika, on Sunday (July 26) gave Arrivabene the chance he had been waiting for...
Mercedes won eight of the nine previous races and its non-executive chairman Niki Lauda had stirred things up when he blamed Ferrari rather than his team's dominance for making the sport seem boring.
Lauda, a Ferrari F1 champion, had said: "How is it Mercedes' fault if Ferrari mucks about with spaghetti rather than improve its car on the track?"
FERRARI HITS BACK
Ferrari was not going to let a barb like that slip by unpunished and Arrivabene tucked in with glee on Sunday (July 26) afternoon at the Hungaroring. He told reporters: "It's the second victory after 10 races and eight podiums and I dedicate it to those who don't know how to add up, who say stupid things.
"I don't like spaghetti, I had a spicy pizza made and told the team to fill up."
Watch: Nico Rosberg's 2015 Hungarian GP wrap
The 2015 Hungarian GP was Vettel's second win of the season (the other was Malaysia) and he dedicated it to former Ferrari test driver Jules Bianchi, the driver whose funeral he attended earlier in July.
Bianchi died nine months after his Marussia skidded off the track and into a recovery tractor at the 2014 Japanese GP. He sustained serious head injuries.
Hungary was a fitting tribute to the popular 25-year-old, seen as a future Ferrari winner, and an ideal antidote to those who moaned about predictable racing and boredom.
By his own reckoning, it also left Arrivabene just two steps away from heaven.
Before the start of the season, after a winless 2014, the Ferrari boss had set his targets for the year by declaring that two wins would be success, three a triumph and "if we win four we go to heaven".
Success is now assured and Arrivabene could not resist another little dig. "Until last week people were talking about us as a disaster. Most probably they did not read a number or they don't want to read the number.
"Mercedes is strong everywhere. We expect to have good races, bad races. The direction that we took is good. We have nine races to go. We will have races like this one, others maybe like Silverstone and Spain."